"I love the improvements - great job!!" BarbaraUSA"Fabulous. More features than I probably will be able to use in a long
while."Brian
KurtzTaylor,
MI"Fantastic! This is a vast improvement over the original
version." Brenda
HarnessUS"Blown away by the incredible features." Woody
LongacreTempe AZ,
USA"Amazing! I LOVE it!"

Colin GreenSydney, Australia"Great improvement of a superb product" Ed
JacksonWoking,
UK"Very impressive! I have been using the SBI site builder, which in itself is
an impressive tool. After seeing the new version of XsitePro though, I can honestly say that it is
second to none, in terms of functionality and features." Cesar
CamposSydney,
Australia"Absolutely amazing! I thought I'd seen the "BEST" website building software
in XSitePro v1 - version 2 just takes website building and developing to a whole new level. Sheer
brilliance!" Alan
HowellsStoke on Trent,
UK"EXCELLENT" DeannaWisconsin, USA"It looks awesome. The best just got better." SimonWiltshire, UK"WOW!!!" Judie
Brown
Washington, USA"I can hardly breathe! There is SO much stuff. I'm choking with
excitement!" Harold
Jaynes
Washington DC"WOW! FAR-OUT! GREAT! TREMENDOUS! This is coming from a web developer, not a
novice! I have so many clients that I have put on hold - waiting for the added features. These
features will save me so much time which will add revenue in my pockets...It's like going from the
horse and buggy to a Ferrari!" Betsy
ParsonsVirginia,
USA"Fantastic!" Andrea
Wilson
Vancouver, Canada"Wow...so many new, exciting and upgraded features this is going to make
website building a really fun project." Connie
UprightVirginia"I think it is a really powerful piece of software ... I am an experienced
marketer, as well as a web designer with FrontPage, DreamWeaver CS-3 and others. You guys have done
it again!" Ettione
StuckeyUSA"Superb improvement on an already excellent tool." James
MitchellUnited
Kingdom"Beyond all
expectations!"
Shush AryaUK"WOW! WOW! WOW! There seems to be everything that anyone will need to create
great content sites. And the easy tools to put video, ssn, rss feeds, and right now my mind is
swimming in awe."Steven R Shover Sr
Texas, USA

Paul Smithson - 22nd December 2008The Internet can be a difficult place to
navigate if you’re visually impaired and it has to be said that
far too many webmasters don’t make much effort to ensure that
browsing their site is as easy as it could be for visually
impaired visitors. Fortunately, making your site more
accessible isn’t all that difficult or
time-consuming.

One of the most basic and yet important
things you can do to improve your site’s accessibility is to
name links properly. Naming a link “click here” may work fine
for sighted people, but it’s not going to make much sense to
someone who is visually
impaired.

A link should be descriptive, such as
“Click here to download 1,001 cat food recipes.” This
also allows you to work keywords into your link text, which has
a knock-on benefit for search engine
optimization.

The next major thing you can do to improve
your site’s accessibility is to include alt text for every
image on your site. If you have a photo of a dress your
site is selling don’t have alt text that says picture01.jpg as
that means absolutely nothing to someone who is visually
impaired. Instead use something along the lines of “Image of
blue sun-dress with white floral
print.”

This is also another important SEO
technique, so it’s something you should be doing anyway.
Include keywords when possible, but make sure you describe the
image as thoroughly as possible for your visually impaired
users at the same time.

This is especially important if your image
needs to be clicked. If you have a photo of a dress, and
they can click the photo to order it, you should make the alt
text something along the lines of “Click here to order the blue
sun-dress with white floral print.” This is incredibly
important. Often webmasters will use graphical order buttons
and not realize that if the ALT text says ‘Image001.jpg’ any
visually impaired users won’t have a clue that they need to
click on that image to order.

Another important technique for making your
site accessible to visually impaired users is to use relative
font sizes, instead of using absolute font sizes. Although this
may make your site look a little odd at times, it will go a
long way toward making your site accessible to the visually
impaired. If a user who can’t see well visits your site,
they can change the font size through their browser so they can
see the words better.

Don’t count on things like color, bold, and
symbols to explain things. For example, if you have a
form on your site and certain fields are required, be sure to
put “(required)” beside the fields rather than making the text
red, or putting an asterisk beside the field. The
visually impaired user won’t be able to see these things, so
it’s important to actually use text to prompt them for required
fields.

If your site uses a lot of Flash or image
maps, you could go that extra step and make a special page
devoted to the visually impaired. You should offer a
clear link to this version, so it will be easy to
find.

Since Flash is often difficult to navigate
for the visually impaired, it’s very important to offer a
non-Flash version of your site. Also, many visitors
simply don’t like Flash-based websites. These visitors,
whether visually impaired or not, will appreciate having an
alternate version of your site.

Finally, there are also validators
available that can check your site for accessibility. You can
run your site through one of these to ensure compliance with
accessibility standards. XSitePro has this feature built into
the “Page Analysis” section so that you can check each of your
pages against best-practice and make the changes necessary to
make sure that the page meets the needs of visually impaired
users.

At the moment making your site accessible
to visually impaired users is optional in many countries, but
it is already a legal requirement in others and it is likely to
become increasingly important to comply with approved standards
as the Internet becomes an essential part of everyday
communications, and rightly so in my opinion. Just because
someone is visually impaired shouldn’t mean they are denied
access to information. And by making some of the tweaks
mentioned above can make all the difference and make your site
accessible to a whole new
audience.

About Paul Smithson -
Paul Smithson is the founder of Intellimon and the driving
force behind the best-selling XSitePro web site development
tool. Since graduating in Business Strategy and Direct
Marketing from two of Europe’s leading business schools, Paul
has set up five multi-million dollar companies, one of which is
now owned by the BBC. His areas of expertise include business
strategy, e-commerce, on-line and off-line marketing, software
development, and maximizing the potential of on-line
businesses.

For more information about
this, and many other Internet Marketing-related
topics, visit Paul Smithson's site,
www.xsitepro.com.